In case you missed it this weekend, NPR announced a challenge to its creative listeners — the three-minute fiction contest. The concept is simple: write original fiction that can be read in at most three minutes; I gather this is about 500-600 words.

I think this is a great opportunity; I’m doing it, and I challenge you to join me. If you’re interested, the official details and rules are here (you can also get there from the main page linked above). The deadline is July 18th, so we still have more than 3 weeks.

I suppose there’s some smidgeon of a chance I or someone reading this will be the one person who gets interviewed on the radio and who gets some $25 book I’ve never heard of, but that‘s not the reason for my enthusiasm.

It’s easy to underestimate the power of the ultra-short story. If you are skeptical, follow the above link and listen to the story James Wood read as a tantalizing sample of what can be done with the form. The story is “For Sixty Cents”, by Lydia Davis; it weighs in at around 200 words, but it really got in my skin. The Object Lesson, my favorite work by Edward Gorey, haunts me still even though, or perhaps because, it never quite makes sense. (I don’t know how many words it has, but it can’t be many more than 100.)

My name is Michael Khoury, Jr., but most people call me Cap on account of the deerstalker I’m almost always wearing. And that’s Dr. Cap if you’re one of my students.

I’m assuming that almost everyone reading this first post already knows me pretty well, but just in case let’s play a little game. Picture a math professor. Just, whatever archetype that phrase conjures up for you. Now make the professor male, if that wasn’t your first impulse. And make him twenty-eight.

That guy you’re thinking about right now, that’s me. Unless you’re reading this in the middle of the night, there’s a very good chance I have chalk dust on my pants — it’s part of the uniform.